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Introduction

Weebly is a wonderful website and ecommerce service that hosts millions of businesses online. Weebly tools make it easy to build a professional, mobile-optimized site and grow your business with integrated marketing and advanced analytics.

In this blog, we will cover some basics about how to add a basic form to a Weebly site and, also, how to expand Weebly’s native form capabilities with FormKeep.

Basic Forms In Weebly

Though most users build static web pages on Weebly; the service does offer a simple form way to add a form to a web page. To add a simple Newsletter Sign-Up Form or Contact Form all you have to do is drag the corresponding icon from Build menu (i.e., Build/Basic/Contact Form or Build/Basic/Newsletter Form) as shown below:

Weebly Form Actions

In this example, we have added a simple Contact Form to one of Weebly’s standard templates (highlighted in red). This form includes name, email and contact fields.

Simple Weebly Contact Form

Once the form is in place, there are a number of configurable options. Click on the form element within the Weebly designer and then click “Form Options” to reveal the Form Options panel. Here you will have options for configuring the email that will receive data from the form, Google Captcha spam protection, opt-in and some other settings as you can see below:

Weebly Form Options

Once your form set up and you’ve pushed your website into production, your form can begin receiving data. When users submit information via the form you created you will receive an email that notifies you and contains the form data. You can also log into Weebly and access the data by clicking on the form element in the page designer and selecting “View Entries”. Here’s what the data looks like when you access it via the Weebly console.

Weebly Form Data

Weebly’s built-in form builder is very powerful and simple to use. It makes form building easy for many users. However, some users are looking for opportunities to do even more with the Weebly forms. We will explore some of these opportunities in the next two sections.

Controlling The Look And Feel Of Your Forms In Weebly

As powerful as the Weebly form builder is for most users, some users want to exert fine grain control over the look and feel of their form. For example, the default form in the example above is a bit hard to see against the background used in the selected template. How can a designer make this form pop out against the background?

Form Enhancement Opportunities

Weebly does not offer fine grain control of these elements in the standard form options area. However, Weebly does offer a relatively simple way for developers and web designers to control the look and feel of their form element. Rather than using the included form builder, designers who would like more control can use the Embed Code functionality within Weebly. Rather than dragging the Contact Form or Newsletter Form icons onto your web page, simply drag the Embed Code icon as shown.

Embed Code and Custom HTML Form

With this embedded control in place, the designer or developer can now custom-craft an HTML form to fit their needs and design preferences. In this example, we used the following HTML to design an enhanced form for this template:

The result, when this code is placed in the Edit Custom HTML widget within Weebly is a form with different styling than the native form tool would normally allow. In this case, the form is formatted with a background that allows the form to become more visible against the template background. See the comparison below.

Weebly Form Comparison

Obviously, when using the Custom HTML capability within Weebly, the design possibilities are bounded only by your imagination and design sense.

One thing to keep in mind if you use the Custom HTML capability is that you will have to designate a place for your form data to POST information for storage and processing. Weebly normally handles this for you. However, FormKeep makes this easy. You can learn more about how to do this at the bottom of this article. Read more below or click here to skip directly to the appropriate section.

Enhancing Form Data Management and Integration in Weebly

As we discussed earlier, Weebly handles your form data by default in two ways: 1) an email is sent to a designated email address each time a form is completed with the data from that form and 2) the data is accessible via Weebly’s interface when an administrator selects “View Entries” in the form widget.

For many applications, this is adequate. However, if any of the following apply to you then you may be looking for some more advanced data handling capabilities:

Lots of Data:
If you are receiving a lot of data in each form or many form submissions, it may not be convenient and manageable to receive all of the information in an email.

Data Routing:
If you want to route the data to more than one person, it may not be convenient or secure to share the log in credentials to Weebly or route the data through a single email address.

Integration with Other Applications:
If you would like to pass your data on to another system you will need a point of integration that is not available in a standard Weebly form.

Excess Spam:
Google Captcha will reduce but not eliminate spam. Or, you may decide not to use Google Captcha. If you don’t want to flood your email inbox with spam submissions, you may want a data management rather than email solution for handling forms.

Field Validation:
If you would like to use custom field validation logic, you can do that with a custom HTML form.

Many Forms On Separate Pages:
If you have a long form or multiple forms broken across several pages, you may wish to view all the data in one place.

In each of these cases (and many others) you may benefit from using a form backend like FormKeep alongside your Weebly site. With FormKeep, instead of routing your form data to Weebly or to email, your data will be stored, secured and accessible in the cloud. From there, you will have a variety of tools to help you manage your form data and route it in a variety of different ways.

One popular way that designers and developers use FormKeep is using WebHooks or integration via Zapier to feed data to other applications like Hubspot, Constant Contact, Google Gmail, Salesforce, Slack or Mail Chimp (and thousands of others). You can search for over a thousand different integration points between FormKeep and other applications on the Zapier web site (pictured below):

FormKeep Integrations – Zapier

In order to take advantage of advanced data routing capabilities available in FormKeep you will have to place your own custom form into your Weebly page and then point that form to FormKeep.

You can read more about how to create a Custom HTML form within Weebly at the top of this page (Click Here)

Enhancing Weebly Forms with FormKeep

One thing to keep in mind if you use the Custom HTML capability within Weebly is that you will have to designate a place for your form data to POST information for storage and processing. Normally, Weebly handles this for you with their standard form tools. However, fear not! This is where FormKeep makes life easy.

Let’s review an excerpt from the form code from the CodePen example above. At the beginning of the form you will notice this syntax (Click Here to View Above):

All you need to do is update the action attribute in your form. Your form tag should look like the example above paying careful attention to exampletoken to the token provided to you within FormKeep (Trial or Paid account). You can create one of these tokens for free by signing up for a free trial account at FormKeep Free Trial.

Once you’ve created your HTML form and configured the action attribute, the data will be posted directly to your FormKeep account. From there, you have the option to configure many settings such as spam suppression, thank you pages and re-directs as well as integrate your form with thousands of other applications via Zapier.

You can experiment with this in the FormKeep demo environment in CodePen by clicking here.

If you would like help getting FormKeep setup with Weebly, feel free to reach out to our friendly team at support@formkeep.com.

And, don’t forget, once you’ve built your form, you’ll need to connect it to a backend to begin collecting data. If you don’t want to host your own server or tap into your Node, Python, Ruby or PHP skills, you can easily connect any HTML form to a cloud backend using FormKeep. What’s more, once your form is connected to FormKeep, it’s easy to store, secure and connect your data with 1000s of other systems via Zapier.

All you need to do is update the action attribute. Your form tag should look like this paying careful attention to update the underlined area of the highlighted URL with the token provided to you within FormKeep (Trial or Paid account):

In this podcast, David Kloba & Rob Meinhardt, Co-Founders of Furious Collective, discuss the mindset and methodology of their venture production studio, recount their adventures over the past year of growing FormKeep after having acquired it from thoughtbot, and offer advice to founders preparing to sell their product or company.

One of the most appealing things about using form backend solutions like FormKeep is that, as a web designer or web developer, you can focus your energy on user experience and functionality. You can avoid the burden of building and maintaining your own backend infrastructure.

A large number of our customers choose FormKeep over other solutions because we’ve decoupled the backend from the front end. These customers can style their form exactly the way they want to, using any tool they wish. Complete freedom of expression; no more wrestling with a front end form-builder to get the results you require.

This, of course, begs several questions:

1. What are the foundational rules and principles for styling HTML forms?

2. Where can I find examples of well-styled forms?

In this blog, we provide some pointers to some great resources we have found on these topics.

Rules and Principles of HTML Form Styling

To a certain degree, smart HTML form design and styling is context sensitive so there are no cardinal rules. That being said, we have frequently referred to some nice and comprehensive resources on the web that can help you hone your skills. Here are some of our favorites:

Samples of Well-Styled Forms

There are many examples of good and bad forms all around the web. You may have some favorite examples or examples you don’t like. Here are a few places you can find some good looking form examples including sample code:

Connecting Your Form with a Backend

Of course, once you have a nicely designed form, you need a place to send the data where it will be secure, manageable and can connect with other systems like Google, Salesforce, Hubspot, ZenDesk, Slack and others.

With FormKeep, to make this form active on your website, simply copy the provided html and CSS and customize it as much as you want. Then, all you need to do is update the action attribute. Your form tag should look like this paying careful attention to update the underlined area of the highlighted URL with the token provided to you within FormKeep (Trial or Paid account):

At FormKeep, we make it easy to use your own form HTML and use our backend to capture, store and process your data.

In this example, we have developed a simple Contact Us template that includes the following elements: First Name, Last Name, Email, Subject and Newsletter Subscription Checkbox.

Below the Submit button you can see plenty of other attributes implemented that you can copy and paste to fit your needs. In this example, you’ll see radio buttons, drop down list, email fields, phone number, check boxes, color selectors and many more.

You can edit the html on the left of the CodePen and see the resulting form on the right.

To make this form active on your website, simply copy the provided html and CSS and customize it as much as you want. Then, all you need to do is update the action attribute. Your form tag should look like this paying careful attention to update the underlined area of the highlighted URL with the token provided to you within FormKeep (Trial or Paid account):

You can also update this token in the CodePen example directly and, then, when you press submit on the sample form, the data will be posted directly to your FormKeep account. From there, you have the option to configure many settings such as spam suppression, thank you pages and re-directs as well as integrate your form with thousands of other applications via Zapier.

If you have any suggestions for this form template, please send them to support@formkeep.com.

Sooner or later, after you dig in, you’ll likely reach a point that you want to collect data on your static website. Maybe it’s a lead collection form or a registration form or even an order form. When you reach this point, you’ll learn that creating a form is relatively easy. You can learn most of what you need to know from w3schools.

However, things get a little more difficult when you start working on how to collect data from the form. Do you want the form submission to trigger an email, store data in the could or push data to another system? There are all kinds things you might want to do with a completed webform.

Luckily, FormKeep makes it easy to connect the webforms you create with a hosted database in the cloud to store your data (a form backend) and, even, connect that data to thousands of applications via Zapier.

All you need to do is update the action attribute. Your form tag should look like this:

One of the reasons that FormKeep is so popular with web developers and designers is that it’s easy to style your form exactly the way you want. Unlike alternatives that require you to use their form templates and layouts, FormKeep makes it easy to layout and style your form exactly the way you want without worrying about building a backend to receive your form data.

Learn About Clean Form Layout

Modern web design and form layout principles are always changing and, of course, design preferences vary depending on the developer, designer or target user. Material Design’s website https://material.io offers a great overview of how to style an impactful HTML form. Check out their HTML design overview by clicking here.

To learn more about how to capture your form data on the backend in a database or connect it with another application or receive your form data in email, check out formkeep.com. Once you set up a FormKeep free trial account, it’s easy to connect your form with FormKeep.

All you need to do is update the action attribute. Your form tag should look like this:

Today, FormKeep was named as one of the top 20 form builder tools by Hubspot.

At FormKeep, we believe web designers, marketing teams and customer specialists have better things to do than write another boring form backend. With FormKeep it’s easy to design a simple form and post data to the FormKeep backend.

Many of our customers ask us how to upload images or pdfs from their html forms. They’re looking to capture resumes or pictures of problems with their products. Uploading samples of their portfolio or even small videos for contests.

Managing file uploads across different browsers and user bandwidths limits while adhering to your site’s brand and styling is a challenging task and sometimes causes these projects to be put off until there’s more ‘free time’ from the developer team.

Fortunately there’s a great solution out there that you can have up and running in fifteen minutes!

We’ve looked closely at the many options available and we’ve partnered with Shubox.io. They’ve got a great experience right out of the box, but allows for full control over the behavior if you need it. They upload the files directly to your own Amazon S3 storage so you have direct control over the files.

Shubox.io does a lot more than just provide an amazing user experience for your customers to upload files, it also allows you to transform the images. Resizing, rotating and cleaning up the meta-data are all possible through the service. Great stuff if you need extra processing or need to connect these files to additional workflows in your business.

Check out this recent blog post with all the setup and information about how to get things setup and working with FormKeep.

FormKeep Connects to 1000s of Popular Applications Like Salesforce, Google Docs, MailChimp, Intercom and Slack

FormKeep and Zapier Connect Web to the World.

We know that getting your work done requires many different web tools. In fact, the average mid-sized business uses between 10 and 16 apps and, for enterprises, there can be hundreds or thousands of apps running various workflows. You have your email app, CRM, note-taking tool, emarketing platform, cloud storage tool, team communication app, along with project management tools and more. Sometimes, it can be a struggle to get them all working in tandem. Now that FormKeep has 1,000 integrations, you can choose your favorite tools and easily integrate them with FormKeep.

Thanks to our Zapier integration, FormKeep connects to 1,000 other web tools and applications. Now you can connect data submitted via forms on the web to all kinds of applications and workflows that reside in places like Slack, Google Docs and Salesforce. You can use Zapier to connect with your FormKeep data via codeless integrations called “Zaps”. Zaps will automatically send information from one tool to another, so you’ll spend less time manually transferring data between your business tools and can dedicate more focus to creative, big picture tasks.

Boost Your Productivity with Popular FormKeep Integrations

No matter what other apps you use, chances are you are looking for ways to use web forms to take data from customers and employees via the web and connect that data with the applications you use to run your business. Here are some of the most popular integrations that FormKeep users already use to be more productive.

The New Year is the perfect time to evaluate your processes and find ways to boost productivity. Try out some of the Zaps above or view more ways to integrate FormKeep.